Les West

This article is about the British cyclist. For the American rock musician of the same name, see Leslie West .

Leslie George "Les" West (born November 11, 1943 in Hanley ) is a former British cyclist and national champion in cycling .

Cycling career

Les West was one of the dominant British racing cyclists in the 1960s and 1970s ("West the best"). At the age of 16 he won his first race, and subsequently achieved so many other successes that he was nominated for the national team to participate in the Olympia's Tour in 1964 , where he was unable to place. In 1965 he won the British championship of the amateurs in the road race as well as the Milk Race . In the following year he took part in the road world championship at the Nürburgring and finished second in the individual race of the amateurs behind the Dutchman Evert Dolman . In 1967 West won the Milk Race a second time.

In 1968 Les West competed in the road race at the Olympic Games in Mexico , but could not finish the race after having to change wheels twice. He found this defeat difficult to cope with, because four years earlier, to his great disappointment, he had been briefly discharged from the Olympic Games in Tokyo by the British Federation .

In 1969 West joined the pros and spent a season in Belgium and the Netherlands. He mostly drove criteria, but had problems with the way the domestic professionals competed in their races. He returned to the island and became the British elite road champion in 1970 and again in 1975. In other years he regularly took podium places. During his entire career as a professional driver, Les West started for the British professional team Holdsworth-Campagnolo . In 1970 the UCI Road World Championships were held in Leicester , and West finished fourth.

In 1978 West resigned as a professional and allowed himself to be re-amateurized. In 2003 he became "National Masters Champion" and 2006 Champion of the "League of Veteran Racing Cyclists".

Honors

In 2009 Les West was inducted into the British Cycling Hall of Fame .

Web links

• Les West in the Radsportseiten.net database
• Les West in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )
• West quietly hooked on adrenaline on www.telegraph.co.uk (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Les Woodland: This Island Race . Mousehold Press, Norwich 2005, pp. 123 (English).